The first assignment for the graduate students in the journalism program at UC Berkeley was an unusual one: spend the morning of Sunday, Aug. 26, in church.

The 18 students fanned out across the town of Richmond, attended services and lingered afterward to meet pastors and parishioners.

"I told them to think about where stories come from," said Bob Calo, a senior lecturer at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. "This is a way for them to get in on the ground level."

The ground level is Richmond, an East Bay city of 103,000 people and 53 square miles that is best known for its high crime rates, Chevron refinery and industrial past. The students in the campus newsroom will spend a semester researching, reporting and writing stories for their online news site, Richmond Confidential.

They will cover everything from Richmond's colorful local characters to its youth sports and greening efforts. Crime and Chevron will be featured, but in a way that gets past the headlines. At least two reporters will attend every City Council meeting.

"Richmond Confidential has been a tremendous resource for Richmond," said the city's Police Chief, Chris Magnus. "I think it's helped bring people together around a lot of different issues and activities. The site has functioned like a clearinghouse of information that helps people have a much more rounded view of what's going on in the community."

Magnus, who has been the Contra Costa County town's chief of police for seven years, added, "The challenge we face as a city government is that people's views of Richmond are still formed by the images portrayed in mainstream media, which only comes here to cover a notorious crime or scandal. I think the (Richmond) Confidential really gets out a lot of stories about the interesting things going on, but not just in feel-good stories. They are doing some very strong and tough journalism."

Richmond Confidential was launched in fall 2009 with a $500,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. The journalism school already had two other "hyper-local" digital news sites staffed by students. Mission Loc@l is a bilingual venture covering San Francisco's Mission District, and Oakland North focuses on stories about communities including Temescal, Rockridge and Golden Gate.

The margins

Robert Rogers was among the journalism school's first class of students to cover Richmond. He came to graduate school with experience reporting for the San Bernardino County Sun newspaper, and was familiar with Richmond only because of its crime.

"As soon as I started spending time in Richmond, I noticed a profound sense of energy and engagement by the community," Rogers said. "The reception I got was very positive. City leaders and activists were all more than happy to tell their story. One thing that stuck out was that they had been largely ignored by the media."

Rogers ended up writing a 10-part series called "A Journey Into North Richmond," about the tiny and unincorporated community of North Richmond.

"Before this series, there was really no information on this well-hidden community, forged during World War II and shunted to the margins ever since," Rogers said. He was drawn to North Richmond after hearing talk of a tribute of sorts painted on the wall of the neighborhood's only corner store.

In the first installment, Rogers writes: "The north-facing wall is bedecked in a swarm of colorful butterflies, painted in a happy medley. On the west-facing wall another reality exists. Letters are strung together, sometimes inscrutable, wrought by different hands. They are names, but they aren't on birth certificates or identification cards. They're names born of the streets. Dae. Bezzy. Top-Dogg. Wax. Big COOP. The names may sound playful, but this is a roll call of the dead."

Rogers, who graduated from the journalism school in 2011, was hired by the Contra Costa Times newspaper. He is now trying to spearhead greater collaboration between the West Contra Costa Times and Richmond Confidential, linking stories on the respective sites' Facebook pages, among other things.

Calo, a former television producer for ABC and NBC, spent a recent Monday morning in an upstairs classroom at the school. "We are teaching complicated skills to talented students," Calo said, "and we also have an obligation to the city of Richmond. The question we face now is, 'How do we sustain this?' The grants are gone. The university is keeping it going."

Calo added, "There's a certain drama to this story of Richmond. Richmond lives in a kind of wonderful, stubborn resistance. You wonder about the fate of the city. You wonder how it's going to play out."

Starting small

Student Tawanda Kanhema, who is from Zimbabwe and ran an investigative news site in Namibia before coming to Berkeley, is learning that big stories often start small, that covering a local football game engenders trust that can pay off later.

"The most important thing that I'm learning is that everyone is a source," he said. "You build up that trust with the little stories. You do a story about a football game and you meet with the parents. The parents may work at the Port of Oakland."

He recalls his first week at Berkeley, and the assignment to head to church. "I was assigned to go to the Baptist church," he said with a smile. "We had business cards that we handed out and asked about the issues affecting the community."

His plan is to take what he learns at UC Berkeley back to Africa. "Writing has power," Kanhema said.